“My son!”

“Yes, your son.  He’s a smart lad—­very smart indeed—­about as quick as they make ’em.  He may be a trifle coarse at times, but that’s the spirit of the age, me dear sir.  Me friend Tuffleton, of the Blues, says that delicacy went out of fashion with hair powder and beauty patches. he’s a demned satirical fellow is Tuffleton.  Don’t know him, eh?”

“No, sir, I don’t,” Girdlestone said angrily; “nor have I any desire to make his acquaintance.  Let us proceed to business for my time is valuable.”

The major looked at him with an amiable smile.  “That quick temper runs in the family,” he said.  “I’ve noticed It in your son Ezra.  As I said before, he’s a smart lad; but me friend, he’s shockingly rash and extremely indiscrate.  Ye musk speak to him about it.”

“What do you mean sir?” asked the merchant, white with anger.  “Have you come to insult him in his absence?”

“Absence?” said the soldier, still smiling blandly over his stock.  “That’s the very point I wanted to get at.  He is away in Africa—­at the diamond fields.  A wonderful interprise, conducted with remarkable energy, but also with remarkable rashness, sir—­yes, bedad, inexcusable rashness.”

Old Girdlestone took up his heavy ebony ruler and played with it nervously.  He had an overpowering desire to hurl it at the head of his companion.

“What would ye say, now,” the veteran continued, crossing one leg over the other and arguing the matter out in a confidential undertone—­ “what would you say if a young man came to you, and, on the assumption that you were a dishonest blackgaird, appealed to you to help him in a very shady sort of a scheme?  It would argue indiscretion on his part, would it not?”

The merchant sat still, but grew whiter and whiter.

“And if on the top of that he gave you all the details of his schame, without even waiting to see if you favoured it or not, he would be more than indiscrate, wouldn’t he?  Your own good sinse, me dear sir, will tell you that he would be culpably foolish—­culpably so, bedad!”

“Well, sir?” said the old man, in a hoarse voice.

“Well,” continued the major, “I have no doubt that your son told you of the interesting little conversation that we had together.  He was good enough to promise that if I went to Russia and pretinded to discover a fictitious mine, I should be liberally rewarded by the firm.  I was under the necessity of pointing out to him that certain principles on which me family”—­here the major inflated his chest—­“on which me family are accustomed to act would prevint me from taking advantage of his offer.  He then, I am sorry to say, lost his temper, and some words passed between us, the result of which was that we parted so rapidly that, be jabers!  I had hardly time to make him realize how great an indiscretion he had committed.”

The merchant still sat perfectly still, tapping the table with his black ebony ruler.